I knew I wasn’t missing a pennant race two weeks ago when I took off for Europe, but I also knew I’d miss the Mets anyway. Whether the season is good or bad, it’s still Mets baseball and it flies by way too fast. Sacrificing nearly 20 games to travel, no matter how awesome that travel is, is a bummer. Watching baseball again after that type of layoff feels like Spring Training, but it’s going to be yanked away from me before I even get back into it.

It’s interesting coming back to just three meaningless games against the Marlins before being Mets-less until Spring Training. I felt myself mentally wrapping up the season before I left, despite the Mets still having a bunch of games to play. Now I flip on the Mets games at seven as usual, hungry for some baseball and although it feels great, I know it’s just a tease. I’ll get three likely forgettable Mets games and then a month of playoff baseball not featuring the Mets and that’s barely enough baseball to sustain me through the long winter.

It’s not just the impending offseason that hurts; I missed some memorable Mets games while I was gone. David Wright became the Mets franchise leader in hits, and while it was all but inevitable going into the second half of the season, it’d have been nice to see the games as they happened. The other big one is obviously R.A. Dickey‘s 20th win. Pitcher wins don’t mean much in the evaluation department, but seeing your pitchers accumulating them is never a bad thing. There’s history and emotion tied to the stat that even when you know it’s not hugely important it still tugs at the emotions to see Dickey be the first Met to 20 wins in over 20 years. At least, it would’ve been if I wasn’t in Prague for it. I peeked at Twitter before I went to bed that night, which was just after the game NY time, and was disappointed I didn’t get to share in all the excitement and celebration of it. Living and breathing the Cy Young race with Dickey and watching the other candidates is fun too, and I mostly missed it.

So I’m going to savor and enjoy these last games like a well-cooked steak knowing that it’ll be my last good meal until March. One more R.A. Dickey start to make his case for the Cy Young. 18, barring extras, glorious Mets innings filled with David Wright, Ike Davis and all the rest of them. The Jeurys Familia debut start last night. All some fun stuff to watch and I’m not going to miss a minute of it.